MIT Student Grills Valenti on Fair Use
Found on Slashdot on Wednesday, 28 April 2004
Following a recent speech at MIT on Movies in the Digital Age (streaming audio available), MPAA front man Jack Valenti sat down for a revealing interview with The Tech, MIT's student newspaper. In this entertaining read, Keith J. Winstein grills Valenti on fair use and the right to play DVDs under GNU/Linux. My favorite part is when Winstein shows a dumbfounded Valenti a six-line DVD descrambler he's designed, to which Valenti responds with language inappropriate for the Slashdot homepage. Throughout the interview, Valenti demonstrates his ignorance and misunderstanding of fair use.
TT (The Tech): I run Linux on my computer. There's no product I can buy that's licensed to watch [DVDs]. If I go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and watch it, am I a bad person? Is that bad?
JV (Jack Valenti): No, you're not a bad person. But you don't have any right.
TT: But I rented the movie. Why should it be illegal?
JV: Well then, you have to get a machine that's licensed to show it.
TT: Here's one of these machines; it's just not licensed.
[Winstein shows Valenti his six-line "qrpff" DVD descrambler.]
TT: If you type that in, it'll let you watch movies.
JV: You designed this?
TT: Yes.
JV: Un-fucking-believable.